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He said: “I didn’t pick it as a job, it picked me. The traffic accident put me in hospital for eight weeks and that gave me time to think.

“I was taken to hospital by ambulance, but I wasn’t conscious on the journey there.

“That was before the days of paramedics.”

Mr Radburn joined the ambulance service in 1975 and in 1978 completed his paramedic training.

He also worked with the ambulance service’s medical director and the Oxford hospitals to bring in a new pain relief, Tramadol.

The born-and-bred Witney resident helped found the John Radcliffe Hospital-based charity Support for the Sick Newborn and their Parents in 1982, and the Oxfordshire Ambulance League of Friends – which for many years was the only charity supporting an ambulance service in the UK.